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Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

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Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#391

Post by kube-system »

lrvick wrote: post #384
kube-system wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you replied to is using "could"/"could not" to mean "would comply with the law"/"would not comply with the law" Nobody here is saying that anyone is going to swoop in and physically prevent this software from being distributed on the internet. > Then the problem the legislators sought to solve just got a lot worse, while calling a lot of attention to how little power they actually have to control decentral…

Agreed. They are never going to actually come for niche Linux distros. All the more reason I am pushing back on all the fear. The correct response from the Linux community is to say "fuck off", and get back to making their distros more secure, more private, and easier to use.

Major distros will comply because they want to sell their services in Illinois.

I don’t think noncompliance of a container image is much of a “fuck you” since I don’t think lawmakers have ever heard of you nor would they really care about your compliance anyway.

This bill is primarily about kids using smartphones.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#392

Post by pull_my_finger »

wtallis wrote: post #370
EvanAnderson wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The adtech companies need human verification so they can keep selling ads. Age verification is a way to get that under the radar because normal people are pissed off about "the children" and "the social media". You've also got cultural warriors who would love to censor speech on the Internet championing it, too.

This kind of age signalling with no verification whatsoever does not help the adtech companies at all.

You don't think knowing a users self disclosed age-group would be beneficial to adtech? A) they shrug any liability for showing inappropriate things to minors when all the onus is on the OS to provide accurate info, and B) they get a highly-likely to be accurate piece of profiling information to add the the already huge pile they collect from spying on people 24/7 and harvesting microdata from browser APIs and mobile apps.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#393

Post by otterley »

iamnothere wrote: post #341
otterley wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are valid opinions. However, I also see a lot of bluster here about going to prison for their beliefs from people who wouldn't last a minute behind bars.

Given your comment history, I suspect that you are sympathetic to these laws and you’re trying to prevent people from opposing them, using your “friendly advice” as cover. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people in the US willing to go to jail (or worse) for their beliefs. It’s kind of the founding mythology of the nation . US history is full of people who successfully challenged violations of their rights and…

Not at all! I think these laws are dumb and I don't want my state to pass one.

But when I play, I play to win. Openly thumbing one's nose at the courts and the state is rarely a winning strategy. The way to win is through the democratic process: persuading elected officials to take your side. That, in turn, requires persuading the public to take your side.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#394

Post by lrvick »

otterley wrote: post #285
blurbleblurble wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect I sense that you might be neglecting the big picture. Unjust laws, slopped out illegal orders and an extreme activist court are all in play.

Those are valid opinions. However, I also see a lot of bluster here about going to prison for their beliefs from people who wouldn't last a minute behind bars.

People used to have to die in masses for freedoms in this country. If the worst thing one could face for defending freedoms is some jail time until bail gets posted while the law determines their innocence then anyone who caves to pressure anyway is a complete coward.

And, since you seem to be making assumptions about what people you know nothing about could or could not hypothetically handle, maybe look a bit closer at my history. I have survived WAY harder shit than sitting in an air conditioned box with 3 squares a day for doing what I thought was right, so even if the threat of jail was credible, it would not deter me.

It is the bluster of people that think I even could be jailed for something like this that I am most amused by.

Truly it is fascinating and a bit sad how much fear there is in this thread over upsetting some state level officials.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#395

Post by weakened_malloc »

xp84 wrote: post #342
weakened_malloc wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By contrast, having zero mechanism for the rest of the parents to control this, as is the current case, does impose your "do whatever feels good" values on the rest of the world. Parental controls? They take 5mins to setup.

I use them. First of all, they're still absolute dogshit (but Apple promises good changes in next OS?). And the choice is to either allow social media in its current, extremely toxic form, or ban it entirely. There's no "Allow Instagram but only let them see the content their actual friends post." No "Allow TikTok but let me allow-list the influencers that show up in For You." The peer pressure on kids to be on those…

The difference is that those other things in the past didn't really place an undue burden on everybody else. Whether a child is allowed to watch an R rated movie or go to a pub has no effect on how I conduct myself, age-gating computers or the internet does affect how I use things.

> I think the theory behind the law is that experimenting on children to optimize (without any ceiling) for increasing watch hours, which 100% of the social media sites are doing at all times and have been for over a decade, is unethical and should be illegal.

I agree, and I think this is where the focus should be. It places no burden on any regular consumer to do anything and all the burden on the platform providers.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#396

Post by lrvick »

iamnothere wrote: post #310
hnlmorg wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don’t disagree with your moral position. The problem is you’re bringing a butter knife to a drone fight. There are more effective ways protest this law than posting punk-rhetoric on a nerd forum for a project that will likely fly under the governments radar anyway.

Public expressions of defiance are motivating to people who don’t yet recognize that they have allies.

At least one person understands my intentions. You made my day.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#397

Post by pull_my_finger »

I agree with literally everyone who thinks this is pointless and probably malignant. The problem isn't the visibility or the fact that weird stuff "exists" on the internet. The problem is advertisers "showing" it to people who didn't go looking for it. Ads and algorithms that decide what a person to see are 99.8% of this actual problem, and meta lobbying for something like this is just obvious self-interest to absolve them from any liability for showing kids damaging material, and to hit 2 birds with one stone, they get more PII to add to their "anonymized" aggregate data.

No good will come from this for the consumer. Websites are suddenly all going to start accurately reporting their content rating, especially ancient documents that have been "online" since before css and javascript were a thing. The only ones that will be implementing these checks will be adtech people that shouldn't have it in the first place. Letting out of touch geriatrics make tech policy decisions in a time when the bleeding edge is moving faster than ever is going to be disastrous for generations to come.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#398

Post by iamnothere »

otterley wrote: post #393
iamnothere wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given your comment history, I suspect that you are sympathetic to these laws and you’re trying to prevent people from opposing them, using your “friendly advice” as cover. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people in the US willing to go to jail (or worse) for their beliefs. It’s kind of the founding mythology of the nation . US history is full of people who successfully challenged violations of their rights and…

Not at all! I think these laws are dumb and I don't want my state to pass one. But when I play, I play to win. Openly thumbing one's nose at the courts and the state is rarely a winning strategy. The way to win is through the democratic process: persuading elected officials to take your side. That, in turn, requires persuading the public to take your side.

Ok, fine, but what you fail to recognize that taking a loud public stance against tyranny provides cover for people who are too scared to stand up for their beliefs.

Successful civil rights activism took place in an environment where people were being arrested, beaten, and even killed for standing up for what is right. You could even argue that this created fertile ground for the success of the movement. Failures of justice create hardened activists and support networks, and eventually public support.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#399

Post by lrvick »

otterley wrote: post #251
lrvick wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being afraid and hoping you are never forced to add code to a project you do not want to add is letting the chilling effects work as designed. We need to all loudly and publicly say "Fuck off, I will defend my rights if needed", so they understand how expensive the fight is going to be. Fear is power. Do not give your enemies power.

> hoping you are never forced to add code to a project you do not want to add You keep saying that, but that's not the realistic outcome. The realistic outcome isn't an injunction forcing you to add code. It'd be to force you to pull it out of circulation.

They cannot force me to do either. But it would be a fascinating case study to watch them try. I feel it would only help prove the decentralized censorship-resistant tactics of the project work as intended. Government overreach should be in the threat model of every FOSS project.

Re: Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification

#400

Post by koalak »

lrvick wrote: post #89

Linux distro founder here (stagex) I will never be compelled to implement this, and would never merge it. Every release requires quorum signatures by an international maintainer team, and the distro is designed to work offline-first, with some variants not even supporting network drivers in the kernel, so Illinois legislators can eat shit.

Brother you are doing the worlds work stopping this type of "law".

If we don't like the law we keep doing the thing and enough people join and it gets changed to our liking.

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